The pond, lit silver. The lilies in bloom though the season was not theirs. The air stirred with wings—those white butterflies glimmering like shards of crystal, rising and falling in slow, impossible arcs. And among them… the figure in white.
Qiyao closed his eyes briefly, almost as if the memory burned too brightly.
The robe, pale as moonlight, flowing like water when he moved. Hair that fell straight, so long it caught even the faintest glimmer of light. Lashes that lowered with each note of the flute, shadowing a face too fine, too unearthly. The kind of beauty one did not meet in men, or in women, or even in dreams—something that seemed carved from silence and sky itself.
His lips parted before he realized, words slipping into the empty air.
"Was it heaven I walked into… or only my own madness?"
The veranda gave no answer. The bamboo creaked faintly, stirred by a breeze, as though amused.
Qiyao leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He let the memory spool out in his mind again, detail after detail, as though he feared it would vanish if he did not replay it carefully. The flute, lifted with a grace that seemed older than time. The sound, not merely music but speech—phrases repeated, pauses that pressed into his chest like questions.
He ran a thumb along his palm, a restless gesture. "Not a curse. Not wandering notes. But why—" He broke off, shaking his head, half laughing under his breath. "Why me?"
He lowered his gaze to the dust at his feet, to the faint marks where his sleeve had brushed the veranda clean. For a long time, he sat there, letting silence and memory braid together.
It would have been easier to think the figure was only illusion, some dream conjured by a restless mind. But no dream ever left such weight in the body, such clarity in the eyes. No dream made a man's heart stumble each time he closed them, as if he might see those butterflies again.
He pressed his hand lightly over his chest. The beat beneath was steady, but every so often it jolted—like the pulse of a string struck too sharply.
"This is no curse," he murmured, softer than before, as though convincing himself. "No curse looks like that."
The shrine walls held his voice gently, the way old wood holds the echo of rain. And Shen Qiyao sat there in the fading light, half lost to memory, half searching for the shape of something he could not yet name.
his sleeve streaked, his palms raw from lifting stone. He had done nothing grand, nothing worth noting. Just dusting, straightening, arranging. But inside, something had shifted.
Yesterday, he had only waited.
Today, he had chosen to stay.
And in the act of setting things right, even in the smallest ways, he realized what it meant:
He was no longer pretending he could walk away.
The shrine was not just stone and wood anymore.
It was a mirror.
And in restoring it, he was beginning—hesitantly, silently—to restore himself.
Qiyao paused at the gate of the shrine, one hand resting on the weathered beam. The sky had begun to soften into amber, the light brushing long shadows across the moss-stained stones. He should have left earlier, he knew — and yet his feet lingered.
For the first time, he looked at the shrine not as ruins, but as something else. The dust on its steps, the spiderwebs clinging between beams, even the half-broken bowls — they no longer seemed signs of neglect, but of waiting. A waiting place, quiet and unclaimed.
A thought pressed itself into him before he could push it away: This could belong to me.
Not in the sense of ownership, but in the sense of refuge. Here, the noise of the village did not reach. Here, the forest did not accuse, only breathed. The air was old, but steady, as though it carried memories instead of gossip. The thought lingered in his chest like a seed dropped into soil — small, fragile, but alive.
He let out a low breath, turned, and began to walk down the dirt path back toward Zhuyin. Yet even as he left, the sense of the shrine followed him, as if a faint thread still tied his sleeve to the veranda he had just cleaned.
The path wound between bamboo and cottages, the faint smoke of cooking fires rising into the dimming sky. As Qiyao neared the familiar bend where the road dipped past Granny Xuemei's house, he slowed.
She was already outside, as though waiting for him. Her hands were tucked into her sleeves, her back straight despite her age. When she saw him, her mouth curled into wandering again?" she asked, her tone warm but edged with curiosity. "This road isn't often walked at this hour. Where have you been coming from, hm?"
Qiyao inclined his head politely. "Just walking," he said.
Granny Xuemei chuckled softly, shaking her head. "A young man like you — always restless feet. The village is small, yet somehow you find corners the rest of us forget.
Qiyao answered, almost absently, "I went to the shrine."
Her brows lifted faintly, surprise flickering in her expression. "Ah… the old one, at the edge of the grove?" Granny Xuemei chuckled under her breath. "Walking into abandoned shrines, hm? That place has been emptying longer than you've been alive, yet somehow, it's you who found your way there."
Her words carried the kind of teasing that sounded like coincidence but felt like test. Qiyao's lips pressed thin. He said nothing.
"Come," she said, tilting her head toward the open doorway. "The evening wind is sharp, and tea tastes better when shared."
Qiyao hesitated for a heartbeat, then followed her inside.
To be continued...